The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health (OMH) has released its long-awaited “enhanced” National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) in Health and Health Care. The original CLAS standards were issued by OMH in 2000 and the effort to revise, or “enhance” the standards was begun in 2010.

The enhanced standards are reorganized into a “principal standard”, and then three themes: Governance, Leadership, and Workforce; Communication and Language Assistance; and Engagement, Continuous Improvement, and Accountability:

11. Collect and maintain accurate and reliable demographic data to monitor and evaluate the impact of CLAS on health equity and outcomes and to inform service delivery.

12. Conduct regular assessments of community health assets and needs and use the results to plan and implement services that respond to the cultural and linguistic diversity of the populations in the service area.

13. Partner with the community to design, implement, and evaluate policies, practices, and services to ensure cultural and linguistic appropriateness.

14. Create conflict and grievance resolution processes that are culturally and linguistically appropriate to identify, prevent, and resolve conflicts or complaints.

15. Communicate the organization’s progress in implementing and sustaining CLAS to all stakeholders, constituents, and the general public.

OMH has issued an extensive background document called the Blueprint for Advancing and Sustaining CLAS Policy and Practice to explain and provide more details on the enhanced standards. Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services does not take any action to implement the enhanced CLAS standards by incorporating the standards into its own requirements for federally funded health care and services, grants, contracts, and other activities.

The enhanced CLAS standards broaden the OMH’s definition of culture as “the integrated pattern of thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions associated, wholly or partially, with racial, ethnic, or linguistic groups, as well as with religious, spiritual, biological, geographical, or sociological characteristics.” This is a more inclusive definition that now incorporates DHHS’ activities to address disparities in health and health care based on income, geography, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other factors.

Similarly, the enhanced CLAS standards broaden the OMH’s definition of communication and language assistance to highlight the communication needs of Limited English Proficient individuals, persons with disabilities, and persons with lower health literacy.

The enhanced standards, blueprint, and other materials are available on the OMH’s Think Cultural Health website after a free registration process. Note that the one sentence shorthand descriptions of the standards on the website and in the documents do not include the full detail of the wording of the actual standards.